


Bad days

by von_gikkingen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:01:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26934784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gikkingen/pseuds/von_gikkingen
Summary: Draining half of his bottle in one go he gives the impression of someone who is not having a great day. Now, normally watching the supreme ruler of this garbage pile of a planet getting a dose of karma would sound like a great way to spend my day. But there’s just something about his expression that lets me know he’s about to make this a lot less fun. Because I swear he looks like he’s about to start venting to us. Us. The people that came here specifically to steal as much of his stuff as we can carry...
Relationships: En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	Bad days

“Looters?” says the man wearing the remnants of a glittery golden robe. His expression betraying nothing more than mild curiosity as he walks by the three of us and towards what turns out to be a hidden liquor cabinet built into one of the walls. 

An incredibly well stocked one at that. Which explains why I’m standing beside him, inviting myself to one of the bottles only moments later... 

“Good vintage,” acknowledges the Grandmaster before choosing one himself. “So what brings you fine upstanding citizens of Sakaar into my domain...?” 

“Opportunism,” I reply, holding his eyes to let him know that yes, we _are_ looters and no, I feel no shame over the fact. Wasn’t _do whatever the hell you want_ a rule he’s been living by for longer than any of us can even imagine...?

“Fair enough,” he says only before heading towards the nearest chair and collapsing onto it. 

It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise that he immediately proceeds to ignore us. Draining half of his bottle in one go he gives the impression of someone who is not having a great day. Now, normally watching the supreme ruler of this garbage pile of a planet getting a dose of karma would sound like a great way to spend my day. But there’s just something about his expression that lets me know he’s about to make this a lot less fun. Because I swear he looks like he’s about to start venting to us. _Us_. The people that came here specifically to steal as much of his stuff as we can carry... 

“No,” I say, seeing him open his mouth. A single sharp word that makes my accomplices flinch. Because that’s not a word we can afford to use. Not where the Grandmaster is concerned... 

“No,” he repeats, frowning at me. 

“ _No_. You don’t get to start telling us about how badly wrong everything went for you.” 

“Are you saying I don’t get to have bad days?” 

“Everyone gets to have bad days. But _a despot_ ,” I say, taking a threatening step closer to him, “doesn’t get to complain about them to people he’s oppressing.” 

If I’m taking my life into my own hands by telling him that, I don’t care. I don’t. Both my temporary allies might have run out of the room on hearing me confront him like that but I think I’ll stand my ground for once. 

He nods. 

Just that. Inclines his head to acknowledge my words. And I don’t hear him disagreeing, whatever that even means. Possibly just that he decided that he doesn’t want to waste breath on a looter after all. He does look like he could simply be too tired to talk – and isn’t _that_ a good thing to see, after a lifetime of constant reminders he is godlike in his powers.

“Since we’re not talking about how my day’s been,” he says slowly, after having taken another long draft from the bottle, “what about yours?” 

“ _What?_ ” 

“How was your day, honey...?” he rephrases, on the off chance I missed the joke. Says it with such familiarity it’s almost amusing. Making this whole thing bizarre enough to make me want to play along. Because if he was going to punish me for my insolence I would have been thrown out of the nearest window by now. And looking at him I really don’t think he’s the type to take things out on people. Not in that way. What he needs at the end of a spectacularly shitty day is something else. 

I’m slightly horrified at realizing I might just be able to find out what that is. Because something about the way he pats the arm of his chair, inviting me to take a seat, makes him look so goddamn unthreatening I actually take a step forward before realizing what the hell am I doing. 

“Well, _honey_ ,” I say with too much emphasis on the word, “my day was hellish. Because that’s where I’m living. In _hell_.” 

“Everyone’s a critic,” he sighs. 

“Not everyone. Those that criticize you too loudly usually pay for it,” I say. Bitterly. Well, that’s what Sakaar does. Makes you bitter. Also alcoholic. Just all around maladjusted malcontent unfit to live anywhere civilized. 

“I’m not winning you over, am I...?” he says only. “Didn’t think there was much of a chance. Still...” 

He says only that. The rest is communicated in the way he looks at me. That he just had to try because I look like I might have been fun if he did win me over somehow. And just then I really hate that I know the weapon strapped to my thigh will do absolutely nothing to him, even if I keep shooting until I run out of ammo. Because for even thinking _that_ he deserves to be shot. He really does. 

“You absolute...” I start, words just barely making it through my gritted teeth. 

“I think we already established I’m the worst. You’re just repeating yourself now,” he tells me with a weary sigh. And he doesn’t even sound angry. Doesn’t seem all that ready to defend himself here... 

“Wasting time talking to you, you mean.” 

“Probably,” he says, taking a moment to get himself further intoxicated. The bottle in his hand now truly on its way to being emptied. To be replaced with another one, I’m sure. Because he’s going to indulge. As long as he’s alive that’s all he’s going to do. Have fun. In any form he can get it. “So why are you still here?” he wonders. 

“Because I’m not done looting,” I reply, not skipping a beat. 

“Well, you go right ahead, honey. You know where to find me if you decide you’re going to let me do something about your hellish day after all...” 

There are a lot of things I can say to that. Most of them unrepeatable. But instead of wasting any more breath on him I decide to start working on locating the most valuable things around the place to take with me. That’ll tell him how I feel about that offer, I’m sure... 

***

“You okay there, honey?” 

The words reach me through a headache that feels like it should be enough to kill me. It isn’t. I’m still very much alive – and hating every second of it. 

“It’s a good vintage if your biology can take it,” he says, nodding at a bottle I’ve been taking sporadic sips from as I wandered the rooms of this opulent place, “but for several species it’s, well... poison.” 

I take a ragged breath in order to answer him and find I can’t. My tongue feels too numb. My hands refuse to stop shaking for long enough to allow me to slap his hand away when he reaches to brush the hair away from my face. 

“I’d warn you but you seem pretty conclusively Kree. You should have been fine,” he says, shaking his head sadly. “There must be some other stuff mixed in there if it hit you this hard...” 

“Am I... dying...?” I manage to ask in a strained voice I barely recognize as my own. 

“You might wish you were before it’s all out of your system,” he says. In a tone that is absurdly caring, given who it’s coming from. “You’re in for a few very unpleasant hours, I’m afraid.” 

And then, without any warning, he slides his arm under me and picks me up. Cradles me against his chest, giving me a stern look when I try to struggle. 

“I’m just going to get you more comfortable.”

That’s almost funny – because I can’t imagine being more _un_ comfortable. Which is equal part the incredible pain I’m in and him. The way there’s nothing I can do about being carried in the arms of the hedonistic monster that singlehandedly made this about the worst place in the universe to live in. I’d say something to that effect too, but the pain is gaining in intensity suddenly and I just know I’m going to black out again. 

“Oh... god...” I groan the next time I find my voice. And it’s a lot easier to form words. My tongue does seem to be cooperating a lot more at least.

Then again hearing my voice is a reminder I’m still alive – and I would _really_ rather not be... 

At least he didn’t lie about one thing. I am definitely more comfortable now than I was passed out on the floor. Also more naked. Which doesn’t even give me a pause. It would be more surprising if he didn’t find an excuse to get me out of my clothes. Not to do it would be so much out of character for him I might actually start to worry about what this temporary revolt did to him. But no, he was still the same Grandmaster that’s been neglecting us ever since he first came into power. 

Not the type to do anything besides undressing me before covering me with the softest blankets I ever rested under, thankfully. Though I don’t doubt he did take a good look while he was at it. 

I’m in far too much pain to wonder what does that even make me feel. Losing my grip on consciousness almost as soon as I regain it and drifting, drifting... drifting... into senselessness.

“Tell me you’re not enough of a creep to...” I moan when next I come around. 

“I’m not watching you sleep. I’m monitoring your vital functions,” he replies, possibly a little too fast. 

Spoken as a man who most certainly have been watching me sleep. 

“Why am I so cold?” 

“You _are_?” he says, sounding pleasantly surprised about the news for some reason. I’d ask why but I find my teeth are chattering too violently for me to be able to form words. “That’s good. That means you’re over the worst of it now.” 

I don’t reply. There is no way for me to do so. Neither do I seem to be able to slip out of consciousness the way I did so many times up to this point. 

“Should I...” he says, his eyes running over the blanket shielding my bare flesh in a way that immediately tells me the idea is to get in bed with me. With the purest of intentions, I’m sure. Just to help negate some of what I’m feeling with his bodyheat. 

“I’m not _that_ cold,” I lie, my teeth chattering the whole time. 

“Sure, honey,” he says only. And then he does what he was going to do anyway. Staying on top of the blanket, thankfully, because maybe I’ve been slightly overestimating just how much of a creep he can be, even at his worst. 

And the part that's really upsetting? It _does_ help. Makes me feel a lot better, just to be in contact with someone warm. 

I close my eyes to make it easier to forget who that someone warm is. Almost enjoying the feeling then, the way it’s chasing the shiver out of my flesh, though I’d bite off my own tongue before admitting it out loud. “You’ll be just fine,” he says, not unpleasantly. “You’re a fighter.” 

“That’s not a good thing to be on Sakaar.” 

He doesn’t like hearing that, I can tell. But the look is gone from his face almost at once, replaced with that perpetual smile of his. “So many opinions on how I should do my job,” he says, shaking his head at me. 

“We are the ones that live with the consequences of your screwups,” I tell him as a new, more violent shiver runs through me.

My blood feels like ice. No matter what he claims, it really doesn’t feel like I can survive this. And what a way to die... 

“You know, for someone who clearly doesn’t like me much,” he says, an amused look crossing his face, “you really are doing everything you can to make my day better.” 

Which is probably true. Sure, his newest boytoy backstabbed him in an especially spectacular way and he was basically as close to overthrown as someone like him can ever get – but at least he’s not dealing with the agony I’ve endured ever since I got a little too deep into that bottle of poison. At least he isn’t feeling like his blood is about to freeze in his veins. 

Yeah, compared to me he really is doing just fine... 

***

“My clothes?” I say some hours later, having become certain whatever this was has passed now. 

“Over there,” he nods his head. And I just know that to explain to him why I want him out of the room while I put them back on will take a long and headache inducing conversation. One I’m too tired to have. 

And so I just slip from under the blankets and start getting on with things, keeping my back to him so I don’t have to deal with whatever expression is on his face right now. The whole time bracing myself for some comment about my tattoos. It never comes, though. And why is it even worse, somehow, when he’s relatively well behaved all of a sudden...? 

“You can stay, you know,” he tells me. And it’s not the insult it almost sounds like at first. It’s clear by the look on his face even he isn’t delusional enough to imagine he can entice me into his bed. 

He really means it exactly as it sounds. It’s a big place, after all. Bigger now that so many of both the freeloaders and the indentured servants have fled. There is place here for me. I can have whole floors to myself. 

I don’t even dignify that with a reply. Not that he expected one. For all the time we spent together being brief and, well, strange, he obviously knows me well enough to never have expected me to do anything but walk away. 

“So long, honey,” I hear him say as I go. Almost wistful, the way he says it. Possibly just then realizing he never even learned my name... 

***

People have asked me how I got out of there alive. I had no answer to give them. I still don’t, even now, as I’m finding my way right back to that hive of opulence through the dust-strewn streets of what is no longer a relentlessly loud, dangerous city. 

I’m retracing my footsteps through a cemetery. Finding my way through crowd of shellshocked people who have no idea what they just survived. What horrible cataclysm has taken place here. I’m putting one foot in front of the other somehow. Whatever strange determination makes me keep doing so will have me reach the place eventually. Even if it takes me the rest of the day I will reach that building towering over the streets of Sakaar that I’ve been so relieved to leave only yesterday.

Was it only yesterday? You can’t trust the time here. It plays tricks on you. And on a day like this, where nothing seems like worth putting any trust in, it’s even more of a traitor than usually... 

And so I don’t know if it’s been minutes or hours. All I know is I’m back. The place that felt so good to leave only few short hours ago is the place I’m relieved to find exactly as I left it. The same needlessly big rooms with riches on display everywhere one looked. Still so very empty – disturbingly silent as not even the echoes of all yesterday’s parties survived within these walls. There’s only emptiness. 

And him. 

“Another bad day, honey?” I ask, forcing him to turn to me. Finding that I enjoy how the look of surprise on seeing me replaced that vacant expression from moments ago. So devoid of humour, of joy he became barely recognizable. 

“I’ve lived for a very long time, you know. A _very_ long time. I might live for far longer yet. But I don’t think even I’ll ever have to live through a day this bad again.” 

“I was afraid you’ll say that,” I tell him. Feeling myself smiling even as, at the same time, I feel a tear start running down my face, washing the ashen stains away. 

Both of those clashing emotions have place in me, somehow. The desire to mourn all the lost lives – the desire to smile with relief at the certainty that this really was the worst of it, that for as long as I live there will never be a day as bad as today. 

“If you want to know what did it I... I can’t answer that. I might have some suspicions, but...” he just shakes his head. 

“No,” I say only, crossing the room because it doesn’t feel right to be having this conversation with so much space between us. I make my way through a room that is meant to be filled with exotic people from faraway places, all here to witness yet another celebration of pointless violence taking place in the arena bellow. But there will be no fights today. Not today. Even one more death is unthinkable in this world on which ashes lay so heavily... 

I sit down on that long, ridiculously comfortable couch, not putting too great a distance between us. Not wanting to be too far away from the only living soul I can see. Today is not the day to do that, even if all my feelings about this ageless being are as strong as they ever were. He didn’t stop being the worst thing about Sakaar just because half of Sakaar is now gone. And still all I can do is to get near him. To be grateful for someone, anyone, to be able to be near to. 

“What am I going to do...?” 

“What you always do,” I say, unthinking. “Whatever the hell you want.” 

And let everyone else pay the price for his fun, but I don’t say that. Today a harsh truth like that will not make it pass my lips. Today I’d rather bite my tongue and try not to make things any worse. Because he’s hurting too. Even he, who truly seemed not to have the capacity to feel such a thing is struggling under the weight of everything this horrible day has put on our shoulders. 

“Are you going to stay?” he asks. Just because he can’t bear the silence, I know. And there is only one answer I can give him, I find... 

“Of course, honey...” 

*** 

Things get better and they don’t. The silence eases only to crush us all over again. Only to be replaced by the sound of weeping, so often heard in the streets that once only knew laughter. Cruel laughter, savage laughter, laughter that was nothing but a prelude to violence – and I’d give anything to be able to hear any of them again. Anything but the forever recurring pattern of silence and sobs, chasing one another with the constancy of tides. 

Days pass, uncaring. Some survive their loss, some don’t, giving up this bleak existence they were left with to reunite with those that have been taken from them in death. 

And I, against all odds, live on. Live to see another sunrise and another and eventually a day when the wind and the rain finally gets rid of the last trace of that soft, grey ash that kept reminding us of... 

_Thanos_. In the end the story reached even our strange corner of the galaxy and we were given a name. Someone to blame all our pain on. 

It did nothing to lessen it. Not a thing. We can curse his name with every breath and still we can never regain what he took from us in that single moment. 

We live on. Past that day that for some never ended, will never end, will be relived in a thousand nightmares for years to come. For better or worse we live on. 

Live on to make mistakes... 

And it is going to be a mistake. I know this with the same certainty with which I know I’m heading right for it. That one of these too-quiet, too-long days is going to make me make it. It’s already written.

And eventually the hour does come. Something about this one long, heartbreakingly quiet afternoon makes me look around and see all that I have, all that has been left to me in this world. Too richly furnished rooms that were never meant for the likes of me and too many hours for me to wander through them, directionless, beyond lost. Lonely. That’s a word I don’t like to think of, no matter how appropriate it is. That’s what’s going to be to blame for... 

“I’m going to do this because I deserve this. Not because you do,” I tell him when I find him, in the same place he spends so many of his days now. Watching over his deathly silent arena. 

“What don’t I deserve, honey...?” he says, shifting his attention to me only slowly. 

“This...” I say even as I’m sitting down onto his lap. Startling him for all of one second before his mind switches gears and his arm encircles my waist. An involuntary reaction but I’ll take it. I’ll take anything that might replace this terrible silence. Even if it’s only going to be for a while, even if it’ll make it all the worse for having been gone, I still want to be free of it. For as long as he can make me free... 

“You don’t really want this,” he says. It’s not a question.

“No. I don’t,” I admit, running my finger over his lower lip. “That won’t stop me. And we both know nothing can stop you.” 

Because his hand is already tracing its way up my thigh even as the other one caresses my lower back with the clear purpose of finding a way to slip under my shirt. I’m not disliking either touch. Don’t dislike anything about this moment that shouldn’t be happening because he hasn’t stopped being a despot. He never will. He’ll never know how not to be uncaring and selfish and far too quick to indulge his appetites... 

And soon I’ll be as bad as him because I have an appetite and I will not deny myself. I’ll have this, whatever I can get out of this, the negation of the distance at which I kept him up until now. I’ll... “Tell me,” he says, watching my expression for any sign my determination to go through with this is waning. 

I tell him. Tell him everything I need him to do to make it better, this nightmare of a day. Tell him in the moment when our lips aren’t touching, whisper the urgent words in a breathless voice whenever my tongue isn’t entwined with his. 

I say less than I need to, but I know I can trust him to guess the rest. If there’s one thing I know he can be trusted with it’s the pursuit of pleasure. I can live with being just another place he finds it. I really can. I won’t hate myself for this, now or after it’s over. Knowing that makes it so much easier not to resist. 

I don’t. I don’t resist a thing, not when I’m lifted from his lap and pushed down onto the couch so he has easier time taking my pants off, not when he never pauses before starting to tug my shirt upwards to bare the rest of my skin. I let him do all this because I asked him for this.   
I asked him to forget everything he knew about me and fuck me like he would one of the vacuous pretty girls he always kept around the place. I asked him to not even think about holding back and this is what I’m going to get for it. The greedy way he runs puts his hands on the tattoos running down my ribs in the moments he’s not using them to impatiently tug at his own clothes to get his golden robe open. I get a look of both shock and delight when I give his lip a bite at the end of a long, exhausting kiss. I get it all, every little trick he learned over his unthinkably long lifetime spent perfecting his ability to elevate this simplest of pleasures into something that’s almost too much to bear. 

And I almost, _almost_ tell him to stop. Tell him of that growing feeling that I underestimated what can he do if I surrender myself to him. But the words never come because I know, just by the way he looks at me, we’re past the point when I can stop him. I can make him relent a little, ease off the pressure of his body against mine, handle me with more gentleness – but there is no asking him to do anything beyond that. There is too much urgency in his touch now, too much hunger in his eyes. He’ll not be denied. Not something this desirable. 

That's what I am to him. An object of desire. The furthest thing from some soft, pampered concubine and yet I provoke the same reaction in him they knew how to awaken. I might be rough and imperfect and my blue skin is marred by black ink in too many places, with no sense of symmetry going into the design – but I am warm and alive and that’s enough. It might not have been enough on Sakaar as it once was but it is today. Reason enough to put that smile on his face and that’s something I find I can live with. 

I close my eyes and let whatever comes next come, supressing whatever expectations I have in favour of whatever he might surprise me with next. His fingers intertwine with mine, his weight settling more firmly on top of me and too soon I am forced to stop hiding behind my eyelids, to look up to see what it is that’s stopping him from going further than that, even as I’m laying under him offering no resistance. It almost startles, that smile I see on his face then. A smile of someone who takes perhaps too much joy in life. All the pleasure there is to take he takes, his capacity for it not lessened by the many eons he has lived through. And what I read in that smile is the desire to savour this – savour me, the sight of me in this moment. The Kree colouring of my skin offering such a sharp contrast to his own, the eyes, still half closed in anticipation, whatever expression is currently etched onto my own features... 

But whatever enjoyment he finds in the view it can only stop him for so long. I’m not here to be admired, I’m here to be touched. That’s what I told him to do. That’s what he never hesitated in doing. And as soon as the long second in which he watches me elapses I can feel him enter me. I can feel his mouth meet mine just in time to help smother the cry rising from my throat in reaction as involuntary as the way I dig my nails into his skin, locking our hands together even further. 

“Faster,” I say breathlessly moments later, as I realize that the unhurried motions with which he thrusts into me are not enough for me. 

“Hush, honey,” he tells me, his teeth nipping at my earlobe to emphasize the words and a shudder runs through me in reaction to the quick, sharp sensation. And any thought of asking him again flee me because I know that for all he’s not rushing through the motions of this he’s still going to give me the release I need. 

I lose myself in what follows, never once trying to tell him what to do for me again. Never once protesting when he lets me know, whether with words or merely with his touch, what position he wants me in. 

It’s not exactly submission, the way I let him control what happens. It doesn’t feel like I’m relinquishing power over the situation. It is simply the only way I can act once I realize just how much pleasure I can expect if I let him take charge. And still there comes a moment when I have to admit we are not evenly matched... “I don’t know if I can keep up for much longer,” I whisper, the sound of my voice only further testament to my exhaustion. Pleasant exhaustion, yes, but still my body is crying out for rest. 

He says nothing, merely presses a brief, almost gentle kiss into my neck. A single touch that communicates to me that it’s not going to be necessary for me to force myself to match his fervour. That he’s nearing his limit now and soon, very soon, we’ll both get to start recovering from all this feverish activity. 

I have to press my hand over my mouth just moments later, as the sensation of liquid warmth spreading inside of me causes me to climax. A sensation as sharp and overwhelming as it was the first two times, all the more surprising because I really didn’t think he can rouse my body to that point through my exhaustion. And yet I shudder with the sensation, only a second delayed to his own. 

It is a surprise, to find that he’s not a talker, that he lets these long, relaxed moments after all the passion has been spent go by in silence. There’s no need to brace myself for some remark that would, in just a few words, remind me exactly of who he is. No words come. No disturbance to this pleasant, warm moment that stretches on, untainted. 

My heavy breathing subsides only slowly but with that change I feel the true extent of my exhaustion. It is so hard to resist slipping into sleep right there, naked and glistening with sweat and not caring one bit just how exposed I am. 

And it might be a dream for all I know from behind my closed lids. The sensation of fingers pushing the sweat-matted hair away from my forehead. The softness of fabric as he lays something, possibly the long golden robe he always wears, over my exposed flesh. 

Whatever expression he’s watching me with right now, just as I’m succumbing to my exhaustion, it would probably tell me all I need to know about what this made us. About whether this was a moment of madness never to be spoken of again or something else entirely. I could find answers to those rather important questions, if only I had strength enough in me to force my eyes open again. But I can’t. All I can do is wonder if it’ll all seem like dream after I wake up. But no, that can never happen. I know too well that not even in my wildest dreams I’d imagine _this_. 

“Hope this helped, honey,” I hear him say, or think I do. Or dream I do. And I am too far beyond consciousness to say the words. To tell him that, yes, yes it did. It helped to make this into something I simply can't describe as a bad day... 


End file.
